Host: Sri Chinmoy, in your readings and in your talk, it seemed to me that you were not appealing to the intellect of man. You seemed to be appealing to his heart and to his sense of surrender and bliss. What is the proper relation between head and heart?

Sri Chinmoy: Excellent. Thank you. Now, I personally feel that heart has to be given more importance than the mind, precisely because inside the heart the soul abides. The soul is all light and all bliss. Now, you can say that the soul permeates the entire body, but I know the actual location of the soul. It is inside my heart and the light that the soul has has a free access, or you can say very often it has a free access to the heart and not the mind. Now, unfortunately, what is happening is this: the mind that we are daily using — the intellectual mind, sophisticated mind, doubtful mind and self-contradictory mind, this is what it is — this moment mind is saying Sri Chinmoy is a good man; next moment, this very mind will say he is a rascal. So then there is no end to mind. And this moment, mind will extol someone to the skies and the following moment, mind will say all absurd nonsense things about a person. Then the mind starts doubting the mind, whether the mind is right in its own judgement.

In the case of the heart, it is not like that. Once the heart accepts someone as its very own, then it continues. The mother knows the child is her very own; the child knows that mother is his very own. So, when we accept our father, or mother, everything, God our eternal Friend, if we accept Him with our heart then our relationship lasts forever. Otherwise, if we start realising God with the mind we will be confused. It is the most difficult path to go through the path of knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is always necessary but the mind that we are using daily has no wisdom. It has only information, book information or newspaper information. So, this is of no use when we want to enter into the realm of spirit and try to realise God. So, heart means identification; heart means the feeling of oneness. The moment I use my heart, I am identifying myself with some reality and then we get the very essence of that reality. I get the very essence of that reality all at once. Then I become part and parcel of that same reality and consciousness.

So, I feel the path of the heart is not only the safest but at the same time the most fulfilling because here I have nothing to doubt. Truth I am seeing, you are seeing, face to face. Then it is up to you to identify yourself with the truth as your very own or not. But in the case of the mind, unfortunately, it is not like that. Mind may see the truth but mind will doubt the very existence of truth and then this very mind will say, "What is the use of staying with the truth when I have my own separativity consciousness?"